here we effectually shew our love for each other. A third obstacle has been mentioned to the exercise of evangelical benevolence; and that is, ENVY. Why are we envious—and to what acquisitions will this envy lead? The road of life is short, narrow, and ruggedand we envy a person, who, by his superior understanding or superior virtues, or by his painfully-earned good fortune, ease, and comfort, is enabled to walk along it with comparatively less pain and anxiety. What is this malevolence, therefore, but a fiendlike principle-impolitic and preposterous as it is wicked?-for it neither benefits ourselves, nor diminishes that felicity in others at which we are so provoked. Dreadful and pitiable is that man's case, who is determined never to love, but to envy, his neighbour. His heart is corroded by the canker of care. No evening sheds slumber upon his eyes, no morning wafts fragrance to his senses. The volume of creation is dark and closed to that man's capacities: or it exhibits colours the most gloomy and repulsive. Fear is his companion: hatred is also his attendant: and misery and anguish enclose him in their baneful embrace. U A fourth, and the last, obstacle which I shall here notice, to the exercise of that LOVE SO beautifully described and so forcibly inculcated by the Apostle, is, the indulgence of a passionate, wrathful, and unforgiving disposition. Gracious God!—what are we, that we should thus shew that indignation towards a fellow mortal - who hath merited no reproach from us-when thou hast withheld thine own indignation against us, who are constantly and audaciously offending! Thy decrees, like the dews of thine own heavens, descend upon us in softness. Thy sun shines upon the just and the unjust-and yet we are fierce in anger, and eager to revenge! O the impotency and the wickedness of our enmities and animosities! Oh, that our minds could be tempered with hearts softened by love! little way before us. wisdom, and our Let us only look a There stands our se pulchre !!—and where will then be our blind fury and boisterous implacability? View the tombs of those who have set the world in flames by their fierce passions and see how quiet, how fearless, how unpitied, they repose! Away, therefore, with anger, my brethren. If the sun, this evening, shall set upon the wrath of any one here present, let him make haste, when it gladdens the earth to-morrow with its beams, to seek reconcilement and amity-and be in peace and brotherly love with each other as long as ye live! I have now examined a few of the principal obstacles to the exercise of that love recommended by the Apostle in the words of my text; and I close this examination and my discourse, by beseeching and entreating you to avoid them all. It is in the power of every one so to act. We may, and can, and ought to, love one another even as our heavenly Father hath evinced his love for us, by sending down his beloved Son Jesus Christ our Lord, that, we, through his sufferings, might be saved from everlasting perdition. But remember-our affection for each other will cost us no sacrifice of the kind. No blood need flow: no privations be experienced: no hardships be endured-but the operation of affection towards others tends to the best of effects in ourselves-in producing comfort, peace of mind, tranquillity of hope, suavity of disposition, and the most perfect happiness which, I verily believe, it is in the power of this world to bestow. SERMON XXII. PSALM XXXVii. 38. Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last. THE holy scriptures abound with exhortations to virtue and to happiness. In no compositions of profane or even christian authors, however brilliant for wit, or captivating for language, will there be found so many strong, so many persuasive and obvious arguments, for the attainment of happiness here, and for a well-grounded hope of happiness hereafter. In the psalm from which my text is taken, the royal author seems to have been unusually animated with the subject under discussion. Equally convinced of the triumph of virtue, and downfall of vice, he encourages those, who may be drooping under unexpected adversity, with the strongest assurances of the final happiness of such who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, but take delight in the law of the Lord. "I have been young," says he, in the 28th verse of the psalm, “and am now old-and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread." If therefore (he may be supposed to have argued), if you wish to attain these comforts of the righteous-if you wish to be always upheld by Almighty God, and your seed never to beg their bread-"keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right; for that alone shall bring you peace at the last." No one will deny that a death-bed of composure, and of a well grounded christian hope, is, of all earthly things, the most devoutly to be desired. While we have health, and prosperity, and distinction in this world, and while we are gratified by the reverence of some and by the admiration of others, we may not consider our latter ends in that just point of view wherein we shall eventually find that we ought to have considered it. But these habits of thought and of action must undoubtedly cease when the moment of dissolution approaches when our Almighty Creator, by the suggestions of our own consciences, bids us consider whether wealth and admiration alone can bring us "peace at the last ?" -- |